


Good Luck Charm

by toushindai (WallofIllusion)



Category: Baccano!
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-01
Packaged: 2019-02-09 07:16:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12882834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/toushindai
Summary: Rosetta gets her boyfriend involved in something dangerous, and tries desperately to get him un-involved again. For Baccano! Week 2017, Day 5: Moments.





	Good Luck Charm

**Author's Note:**

> [obligatory bemoaning of my inability to stop deciding things about Rosetta based on very little evidence]

Rosetta opens her eyes.

The dream she’s just had is no dream—instead, it’s a vision of the near future. Of upcoming chaos. The Flying Pussyfoot, a transcontinental express. Murders, hijacking, competing factions. A handful of Ronny’s Immortals. It’s complex, and the dream had been overwhelming, but honestly it isn’t particularly concerning. Somehow, the only ones who will end up dead are the ones who will be guilty of the worst malice. Rosetta rolls over in the bed, her interest in the train fading—

But then she realizes two things in the same moment.

One: Jacques-Rosé is awake next to her, shifting uneasily, his eyes opening a crack to look at her.

Two: her knowledge of the events of the train are changing. **The future** is changing.

As soon as the future revises itself in her head, she forgets its earlier shape; but as it settles into its new form, she feels a deep dread that she knows she was not feeling a moment ago. There will be innocent victims aboard the train. Humans who try to step into the fray, who try to save people, will be mercilessly gunned down.

Rosetta’s blood runs cold for a moment.

**Jacques-Rosé will be there.**

She tries to keep her breath even. She tries to hide the fact that she’s awake. She feels the attempt fail.

“Hey, Rosetta?” he breathes. “You awake?”

“Yes,” she murmurs back, because she doesn’t feel like lying tonight and she has to know why the future just changed. It’s not like she’d intended to tell Jacques-Rosé about the chaos aboard the train—but somehow, he just became involved. “What’s up?”

“Oh. Nothing, sorry.” He shifts onto his back and stares up at the ceiling. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have woken you up. Just… had a weird dream, is all.”

“A dream?”

“Well… it felt too real to be a dream. But don’t worry about it, honey.”

He obeys his own suggestion with more ease than she does, drifting back into slumber within a few minutes. She stays awake, wishing she could read his mind. Her vision, his ‘dream,’ the changed future—she doubts it’s all a coincidence. And even if it were, how was she supposed to get the image of Jacques-Rosé being shot aboard the Flying Pussyfoot out of her head? That’s how the future is aligned, for now. There’s still time to change it, but this event feels stubborn. Entrenched.

Not for the first time, she wonders if she’s done something wrong by involving herself in Jacques-Rosé’s life. Her very closeness to him disables her ability to answer the question: it blurs her sight of his future because it overlaps too frequently with her own. And now her knowledge has somehow seeped into his subconscious, and the knowledge has put him in danger. A grave mistake. That she has come to care for someone who falls outside of her omniscience can only be another mistake.

A very human one.

(More’s the pity.)

At long last, she sighs and rolls away from him. In any case, she can’t abandon him now. She will keep him off the train and decide what’s best after New Year’s.

*

She catches him checking train timetables in the morning and asks him why, as though she doesn’t know.

“I have this weird feeling,” he says. He lays the paper out on the table between them. “Ever since the middle of the night last night. Something’s going to happen on this train. Something big. And bad.”

Rosetta glances down. His finger is resting on the name of the Flying Pussyfoot. It’s no surprise, but she doesn’t display the resignation she feels. Instead she tilts her head to the side.

“Didn’t you say you had a weird dream last night?” she inquires. “Jacques-Rosé, are you getting dreams and reality confused?”

“No. No, I don’t think so. I can’t remember what I dreamed. I just know that the Flying Pussyfoot was involved, and there was evil aboard the train.”

“That sounds like some sort of eerie gothic story,” Rosetta says, lightly patronizing.

But her words have the opposite effect from what she intends. Instead of discouraging him or convincing him that he’s imagining things, they make him more certain of what he feels. The future doesn’t budge.

“Whatever it is,” he says, only half-listening to her now, “it’s gonna happen at the end of the year. And I’m gonna be on that train, and I’m gonna stop it.”

*

Jacques-Rosé stands awkwardly at the ticket counter, rooting fruitlessly through his wallet, until the man behind them clears his throat and Rosetta has a reason to tug him out of the way.

“It’s an expensive train,” she murmurs, feigning sympathy. “If you just want to get to New York, there are other—”

“No,” he says. His voice is quiet, but intense. “It’s something about the Flying Pussyfoot. The December 30th trip from Chicago to New York. I just have this _feeling_ about it, Rosetta. You know?”

Yes, she absolutely does know. She sees the future spread out wide before her, every event crystal clear, but she can’t help but focus on the sight of his bullet-ridden body slumping to the ground in the Flying Pussyfoot’s dining car.

“That’s a lot of money to spend on just a feeling,” she says aloud.

“I’ll manage.” His face hardens. “I’ll pick up some extra shifts at the plant.”

“Jacques-Rosé, listen to yourself,” she pleads, but she knows it won’t work. His eyes are sharp and determined.

“I _am_ listening to myself. I don’t know why I’m the one who knows what’s going to happen, but that means I have a duty to prevent it. And I’m going to prevent it.”

*

She makes a few more attempts to dissuade him, but none of them take root. He saves up enough for a second-class ticket. The future only grows firmer, and Rosetta finds herself spending nights mired in anxiety. It’s not an experience she enjoys.

He’s useless, is the thing: moderately strong, immeasurably passionate, but foolish. He has a big heart. That’s fine. Rosetta doesn’t object to that. It’s fine, as long as he only reaches out his hand towards what he can see in front of him as the ordinary human he is. He can take on bullies and petty thieves, and if he gets in a little over his head Rosetta at least has enough power to bail him out. It’s fine, just like it was when he pushed her out of the way of a speeding car; it never would have hit her, but he couldn’t have known that. She forgave him his ignorance then, and healed his wounds fast enough to keep him from growing suspicious.

But somehow _her_ knowledge has bled over to him now, in the worst circumstances, and Rosetta has to admit that she simply doesn’t _want_ him to get involved with this. Even if she could tell him what to avoid, guide him safely through every single potential calamity, she doesn’t want him on a train with forty murderers and five Immortals. He’s just a human. His passion, his valor—they’re only going to put him in danger, but he believes in their ability to protect him like he never grew out of fairy tales.

Even if she told him how to stay safe, he wouldn’t listen.

So, in the end, she doesn’t tell him anything.

*

Christmas comes, and they celebrate together. Rosetta roasts the turkey and Jacques-Rosé eats most of it, telling her between each bite how delicious it is. She smiles at him. She’s almost accepted his impending death, she thinks. If she’s going to involve herself with humans like this, it has to happen sometime: the loss of someone she’s found herself caring for. Humans survive the feeling all the time, and she’s far more than a human.

After dinner, they open gifts. As she suspected he would be, he’s delighted by the little wooden turtle she bought him.

“It’s a good luck charm,” she says. “If there’s really evil on that train like you say, I want you to stay safe. This will protect you.”

He holds it up to eye level like it’s a real animal he’s trying to look in the eye. “It’s so cute!” he exclaims. Then he presses it against his chest seriously. “I’ll wear it right here, next to my heart,” he promises. “To be protected by your love.”

She laughs, because it’s corny, but he must mean it. The future shifts. She’s bought him a few extra minutes.

And that’s the most she can do if she wants to respect his agency as a human. It’s a stupid limit, but she’s stupid enough to care for him, so this is how it’ll have to be.

*

A few days later, she sees him off at the station. He almost forgets the turtle between the seats of the car and for a moment she stares at it and wonders how she’s gotten herself into this. If his head weren’t attached to his shoulders it would fly off every time he went rushing forward without a second thought to save someone. He really is useless, isn’t he? All enthusiasm, no sense.

A few minutes fade off his future and her heart clenches. Before tears can come to her eyes—tears that he might see—she snatches the turtle and calls out to him. He catches it easily when she tosses it his way.

“Don’t forget,” she says, head tipped to the side with a smile. “You said you’d take me to Dolce when you got back to Chicago.”

“It’s a date,” he assures her with a grin. “Just gotta get rid of the evil on this train first.”

She shakes her head like she doesn’t believe him. “Take care, Jacques-Rosé.”

“See you soon, Rosetta.”

*

_She sits in her bed, arms around her knees, barely holding herself human: only watching, watching the chaos aboard the Flying Pussyfoot. The turtle saves Jacques-Rosé from the Lemures’ bullets. It can’t save him from the knife of the paranoid boy-Immortal. He collapses, fades. His life leaves this world._

_Rosetta takes a deep breath, and tries to fight the feeling of her heart breaking, and—_

_She fails._

_She is indignant._

_Infuriated._

_She is **unwilling to accept this** , for no one’s sake but Jacques-Rosé’s and her own. She takes hold of the threads of time and yanks on them and brings back the afternoon; brings Jacques-Rosé back to her bed, where he was napping before they left for the station._

Where he **is napping before they will leave for the station**.

Like he hasn’t a care in the world.

To be honest, the manipulation is more than she’s easily capable of.

But she expects the nausea, the vertigo. The way her limbs shake. She takes big gulping breaths to steady herself, and before she goes back to pretending she’s someone sweet enough to be dating a softhearted fool like him, she allows herself the selfish arrogance of the universe allowed to enforce its own will. She is going to make sure he is saved.

Then she tilts her head and becomes what Rosetta is expected to be once more. She shakes Jacques-Rosé like she can’t believe he would oversleep at a time like this.

“Jacques-Rosé… Jacques-Rosé! Wake up!

**“If you don’t hurry, you’re going to miss the Flying Pussyfoot!”**


End file.
